Remote desktop services is a service offered by an operating system that may be executed by one or more computers. The remote desktop services include a server component and a client component and allow a user (i.e. a user at a computer that is executing the client component) to access applications and data on a remote computer (i.e. a computer that is executing the server component) over a network. Certain applications or even an entire desktop on the remote computer is made accessible to the user computer. A communication protocol, such as remote desktop protocol, may be used to communicate between the user computer and the remote computer over the network. For example, input received by a user interface of the user computer may be redirected over the network to the remote computer (e.g. a server where application execution takes place).
In certain applications or environments, the client component and the server component of the remote desktop service may be executed on the same physical computer (either natively or using virtual machines). In this case, the remote desktop services may continue to communicate between the client component and the server component over a network, but since the client component and the server component are on the same physical computer, the network source and destination are the same (e.g. the network port of the computer may be looped back so that messages sent by the client component are received by the server component). Use of the network port loop back method for communications between a client component and a server component on the same physical computer consumes processing and network resources.